The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [43]
The villagers and I hopped into a volunteer’s car and drove to the neighboring village. We pulled over when we came upon the group of young men whom the villagers identified as the villainous gang. I picked out the guy who was clearly the leader, sitting on a tree stump with a smug look on his face. I wasn’t afraid or intimidated. I was pissed off. I felt my brain switch into a tougher, New Yorker mode, totally capable of kicking ass and unwilling to put up with anyone else’s garbage.
I jumped out of the car and walked over to stare directly into the gang leader’s eyes. “Do you want to kidnap me?” I asked. “Here I am.” He wouldn’t even make eye contact, but slunk away with his buddies like the cowards they were. I never heard from or about them again.
With that incident, I earned my reputation as the Angel of Galle, someone who was not to be messed with.
Oscar and I literally hadn’t had a day off in months and were showing signs of total exhaustion. When you cry at a sunset or start putting your clothes on inside out, it’s time for a break. Oscar was visibly cranky all the time lately and the smallest thing would set him off. We decided we needed a few days far away from the stresses and strains of the IDP camp. A wonderful volunteer named Sir Ed Artis mentioned that he had been given a free suite at a fancy hotel in Colombo and suggested that we use it.
It was like going from a toilet to a palace. Colombo was bustling and the expensive hotels were filled with wealthy people and representatives from very large NGOs. Some of the best-funded NGOs were paying $500 a night for these five-star lodgings and parking their brand-new imported jeeps in the hotel driveways, which made me feel a bit sick. So this is where the aid money, or at least a sizable chunk of it, is going, I thought to myself.
Oscar and I settled into our room. We experienced culture shock when we turned on the taps and felt hot water pouring out of them. I ran a bubble bath and sank into heaven. That evening, Oscar and I went downstairs for dinner. On the hotel patio, we found a Sri Lankan country-western band dressed up as Texans singing John Denver and Johnny Cash covers. That was only the beginning of a bad night. We had cocktails on the veranda and our conversation quickly turned to the village. We began to feel guilty for being in the midst of such luxury when so many people were suffering. I looked at the prices on the menu and saw how the cost of one meal could support many families in Peraliya for an entire week. Foreigners wearing crocodile shirts and peach-colored pants surrounded us. We were tired and angry and we turned that anger on each other. Oscar yelled at me for no reason and I stomped upstairs to the room. He joined me later, but we still had anger in our hearts as we fell asleep.
The next day, we thought we would make the most of the beach, but the hotel’s equipment had been washed away in the tsunami, so we found a taxi to take us into town to look for goggles and snorkels. We drove around in an inferno with no air-conditioning for hours as the driver tried to find a dive shop. Here it was our day off, and we were spending time fuming in city traffic! We arrived back at the hotel long after lunch and immediately threw ourselves into the ocean. Snorkeling around, we discovered that the ocean bed was filled with people’s clothes and household goods. It was murky and made us sad, so we didn’t stay in the water after all.
We had just gone to lie out on the beach chairs when a Sri Lankan man came running up to us, waving and yelling, “Peraliya! Peraliya!” He was one of our villagers, who had come to the hotel to meet a German lady for a donation, and was thrilled to find us there. For the rest of the afternoon, he followed us like a puppy dog, talking our ears off about his family, business